Before
by Centaur Of Death
Summary: It's a less than perfect future for the remains of the Scooby gang...


Spike cursed and dropped the bag.  
  
'A Cross?' he exclaimed. 'Bloody hell.'   
  
Willow, frowning, picked up the bag as Spike retreated to the counter, seating himself on top of it, nursing his injured hand.  
  
'You ok Spike?' she asked, rummaging through the canvas duffel and occasionally placing an item on the table.   
  
'Sure.' the vampire replied, sullenly, eyeing the cross and stake warily. Willow eventually found what she was looking for and crossed the room to the telephone by the TV.   
  
'Sorry Spike,' she said, somewhat distractedly, leafing through the notebook, the phone in hand. 'I forgot I'd put those in there. Didn't mean to hurt you, really.' Here she glanced up at the blonde, pausing in her search. His face was unreadable. Sighing, the witch returned to scanning the pages for the phone number she required. As always, just when she thought she knew her vampire, she did something, or he said something that completely set askew their whole set-up. "He's evil," Willow had to keep reminding herself. "He tried to kill us, he's manipulative and you shouldn't trust him." This perfectly rational thinking didn't explain why the vampire was living in her house and why she was now ordering Chinese takeaway having set the table and rented videos. Actually, Spike had rented the videos so there was a good chance of the redhead being in for an evening with blood and gore and lots of explosions. At least there was popcorn. The phone number having been found and the order placed, Willow threw the phone onto the settee and crossed the invisible line that separated "Living Room" from "Kitchen" in her spacious apartment. Actually there was a line in so far as the flooring changed from wood laminate to lino, but there was no wall-type construction to speak of.   
  
Spike was still sat on the kitchen counter, poking the blister that had formed on his palm, but was rapidly healing. He didn't look at the witch as she opened the fridge and fetched out a bottle of red wine. He didn't look at her as she opened the bottle and set it on the table along with two glasses. He didn't move at all until she appeared in his eye line, peering up into his face, a picture of concern.   
  
'Spike? I'm sorry, really. I honestly wasn't trying to hurt you, please believe me, I...' she faltered and stopped talking as the vampire grinned.   
  
'S'alright Red.' Spike managed, before jumping down off the worktop. 'I know.' Relieved, Willow sighed and moved to get plates for the Chinese they would soon be eating. Spike glanced at the clock; ten to nine.   
  
Five minutes later and Spike was gone, car keys in hand to "fetch the grub." Willow sighed (again) and sank into a chair, glass of wine in hand. She was exhausted and had been looking forward to this evening all day. Her thoughts dwelling on her houseguest, by association her gaze lingered on the shiny silver cigarette lighter lying on the table, an unopened packet of Marlboros lay beside it, reflecting the lights in its polythene wrapping. Willow found it so hard sometimes to know what Spike was thinking. He was an enigma when it came to his feelings and reactions: when watching a film or walking down the street she could predict his comments before he's even thought them but events such as that evenings, with the cross in her bag, she never knew what he would do.  
  
"He's still vulnerable." The witch thought. "Buffy never really understood that, neither did Giles and even Dawn only cared for him in a 'grown up friend who'll let me stay up late when Buffy wont' sort of way." Thinking about Buffy and Giles brought forth as it invariably did, memories of the past, before, when they were the Scooby gang.   
  
The door slammed with a bang, startling Willow, causing her to nearly drop her half empty glass of wine. Spike sauntered in with the carrier of food, expostulating on whatever situation he'd encountered during the short trip to the restaurant.   
  
'So then, I threatened to eat his entrails if he didn't serve me next.' Spike was waving around a packet of soy sauce as he spoke, dripping it all over the counter.  
  
'Spike, I don't think we should make an enemy of the Chinese Restaurant, not when they do lemon chicken this good.'  
  
'Hmmm...' Spike considered, smelling the tin tray. 'Ok. I won't eat the chinks.'  
  
'Spike!'  
  
'Sorry!' Holding up his hands in protest to the brandished spoon he gestured with his head to the table. 'Shall we...?'  
  
A while later their plates were considerably emptier and their stomachs considerably fuller. Willow pushed her plate away, the remains of a spring roll sitting abandoned. Spike snagged it and swallowed it quickly. 'More wine?'  
  
Willow considered the two empty bottles for a moment before nodding in agreement and wiping a finger round the bowl of sweet and sour sauce.   
  
'Mmmm....remind me to eat this more often.' Willow said, licking off the sauce. Suddenly her smile dropped and her expression was doleful. 'Tara always loved Chinese,' she almost whispered as Spike returned and refilled her glass. Staring at her over the table Spike saw the tiny lines appear at the corners of her eyes as she smiled again, recounting a happy memory. As Nostalgic Willow Babble took the chair Spike was content to watch her talk, not expected to answer, just listen, and he could reflect himself on what was. Before all the death. Before Buffy fought her last fight, before Giles researched the last prophecy, before Xander.....before. Before. Before. It all comes down to Before. The past. What was. Sighing, Spike shook off the mood as it threatening to squash their evening and took a long swig of the wine straight from the bottle.   
  
'C'mon Red,' he announced, getting up, 'Tom Cruise is a-waiting in the front room.' Smiling, Willow got up too and followed the vampire into the front room, bringing the wine bottle with her.  
  
*******************************  
  
'I am so drunk it isn't even funny,' Willow stated, deadpan. A half bottle of wine remained in her hand despite her swaying violently as she crossed the room.   
  
'I know,' the vampire replied, taking the large bag of crisps from her hand.  
  
Willow suddenly sank onto the settee, bottle falling from her hand. 'I miss Xander,' she stated matter of factly before bursting into tears and running into her room.   
  
Spike stared after her, the wine pooling on the carpet, ignored. The vampire heaved the bottle at the wall and it smashed with a satisfying noise. He overturned the table, threw a vase at the large mirror on the wall and slammed out of the apartment, pulling on his duster. Animal rage coursed through him, and he hunted.  
  
~  
  
Some hours later Willow groggily came to, her face imprinted with the fibre of the carpet. She felt sick, and tired and depressed. The events of the previous night came trickling back and she ventured out of her room to get some water, painkillers and find Spike.   
  
The vampire was curled up on the settee under his coat, bleeding from several gashes. An axe lay on the floor by his boots, along with a long tooth, still covered in dried blood.  
  
'Spike?' Willow said softly; she knew from experience that the vampire didn't like being disturbed. Pulling back his coat the witch examined Spike's wounds. They were only superficial and seemed to be healing by themselves. Judging by the remains of blood and slime on the battle axe and the trophy tooth on the floor, Willow guessed the demon came off worse. Other demon. She found it so hard now to think of Spike as anything less than human. Willow felt that if she went to someone else's house and there weren't blood bags in the fridge there was something up. For 8 years congealed blood mixed with weetabix encrusted in the bottoms of mugs, heavy drapes over the windows and the subtle scent of leather and smoke had been her life. 8 years Spike had lived with her, since after Before.   
  
Sometimes Willow still saw the sword in her nightmares and while she never told Spike she suspected he knew; sometimes when she woke up there were stray blonde hairs on the pillow and she wasn't scared any more.   
  
Kneeling beside her housemate, almost automatically feeling for a pulse though she knew better, Willow reflected that all her friends were dead. Are dead. The corpse beside that was so much more than a resident demon, her best friends, her girlfriend, her mentor... all gone.  
  
Taking Spike's cool hand in hers and pressing it to her cheek she allowed herself to cry again.  
  
*********  
  
The sword flashed down, moonlight reflected on it's gleaming surface. The dark haired young man's face reflected in it too, mouth open in an O of surprise and the knowledge that this was the last blow. The blade sliced down through air and flesh and bone and blood and Xander fell for the last time. Buffy turned as she pummelled a vampire into a tree, staking it on a wayward branch. She felt sick. She was sick, in the ashes that were inanimate life. The slayer was chocking on death; the dust from the vampires got into her throat, the bile threatened to rise again as she gazed at Xander's body, unable to look away.  
  
The red-haired witch hung in midair, flashes of light cutting through the air, heat radiating out through the night from her raw power. Her eyes were transfixed on the soulless brown eyes of her best friend, staring in unseeing death at the sky from where his head lay half in the shadow of a gravestone.   
  
In that moment Buffy perceived all the death of the world since the beginning of time; all the death she had caused. The lineage of the Slayers stretched back in time in a trail of blood; Buffy could not see the future.  
  
Suddenly the moon was blocked out by a form above her; the demon. Looking up into his gold eyes Buffy thought she saw peace. In the moment when she would have picked up her crossbow, her axe and taken a shot. In the second she could have jumped up, running up the tree Matrix style and dropping down behind the demon, raining down punches on his scaly skin, kicking his body into blood and mess, Buffy merely sat.   
  
Spike was right. There is a moment when the Slayer gives up. This is it. Where she would have fought all the harder for the hurt to her family, she felt herself fall. Where she would have exacted revenge, she silently preyed for silence. The demon held aloft the sword, still dripping with Xander's blood, and the last thing Buffy Summers saw before she broke the first rule of slaying, was the moon, shining bright in the metal, bright and full and hopeful.  
  
********  
  
Willow started awake, surprised to find she had fallen asleep. Spike's hand lay under her cheek on the edge of the settee, pink from her warm skin. Looking at the clock Willow saw it was the early hours of Saturday morning. The sun would be up soon and they hadn't closed the curtains.   
  
The witch got up creakily from where she was curled up on the floor and crossed the room to the window. The moon was full and bright and Willow looked to the sky and prayed that those she loved had found peace.   
  
A hand laid unexpectedly on her shoulder. She placed her hand atop it and stared at the sky.  
  
'I miss them too,' Spike whispered in Willow's dark red hair. 


End file.
